And you were thinking about the future of American Cities, you would have seen potentially a very bleak future. That was the time when particularly our urban cores, new york city and los angeles, were in the middle of a bona fide crisis. You had seen years of deindustrialization ravaged the working class of the city and an enormous middleclass flight to other regions entirely. That was very hard on the Fiscal Foundation of the cities and the civic life of those cities. You saw the tremendous renaissance over the subsequent decades. That renaissance was not even. You did not see it in every single American City but you did see it in a handful of cities that had a renaissance in governance. The Manhattan Institute was deeply involved in an urban renaissance but one thing we have been arguing for some years is that, wait a second, everyone. We are in a period of relative health. You see a comeback of many major American Cities but lets not take this for granted. Lets look at some of those frailties and vulnerabilities. Lets look at the fact that we do not always have the wisest longterm fiscal and economic policies. People seem to be preparing for only good times, not for potential reversals. When the covid crisis hit, i fear many of those underlying challenges, many of the problems that had been neglected started to really come to the four and were sharply exacerbated. My fear is youre going to see a period of 1980 22020 when you saw this tremendous disparity in prosperity in a number of major urban centers. At 2020 beyond, if we do not approach this in a thoughtful, careful way, could represent a reversal in which that Economic Activity, that talent, that flooded into our cities, starts to flood out of our cities. That is a dire view area i dont think it is inevitable by any means. That is what i believe thoughtful Civic Leaders should be working to prevent. How can we extend a renaissance and deepen it and ensure it reaches more americans and more citydwellers . To me, the covid crisis is both unique and pressing in itself it is also something that represents a kind of correction and reversal that many of us had feared for many years. Host here is a statistic that points to the growth of cities, from a New York Times story. Americas biggest metropolises had been in an extended period of growth with 10 cities, home to one third of all u. S. Economic production, and this is interesting, produces half of the patent in the United States. What were the factors that lead to that kind of growth in those select cities . Guest they had a reasonably large collegeeducated population. They wound up faring differently from cities that have a much smaller educated population. Essentially, there was a Path Dependence at work in which having certain civic assets, particularly a Major Research university, wound up paying very large dividends in the future. One reason is that when you have a Large Research university, you would often times see those graduates remain in the immediate area. You would build you would see them build businesses in that area. That would be a kind of self reinforcing process in which skilled professionals in other regions that did not have the same Critical Mass as other skilled professionals began to flock to the cities that became dense concentrations of that kind of talent so it could contain the increasing returns dynamic that became quite pronounced to the point where it actually had some pretty difficult and negative effects on communities that did not already have those advantages you could say cities that started out with a bit of a head start, saw that grow and grow and grow, so that has complicated, mixed effects for the country as a whole but also, when you are talking about scientific innovation, entrepreneurial innovation, it does benefit from positive spillovers, positive externalities. When you have a lot of is nest enterprises, talented people working at on the same kinds of problems in the same area, you can see a lot of iteration. You can see a lot of collaboration that would be much harder to achieve certainly and other eras when Transportation Technology and Communications Technology was not quite as advanced. You could not see that same kind of collaboration. There are serious gains to be concentrated in those areas had one question we face is whether that will continue to be the case in the future. Or have we seen Communications Technologies change in a way that makes the dense concentration of talent less necessary . I personally believe it will continue to be necessary but that is a very deep question for those cities that have made their bones, that have become successful as concentrations of talent. Host seven or eight months into the covid pandemic, what trends are you seeing that cities are facing that causes concern . Guest well, there are a number of them. The first and most important one is a deterioration in Public Safety. Now, when you are talking about crime statistics, we need to keep in mind this is a moving target. Things can change quickly. But if you are looking at cities that release Realtime Data on crime, over the last few months, there has been an unambiguous increase in homicides. We have seen that in new york city. You have also seen it in a number of other cities as well. You have seen an increase in shootings, whether or not they result in a death. That is a huge problem. When you think about that urban renaissance we talked about earlier on, one precondition for that Economic Growth, for that revival, for the fact that those who could afford to live elsewhere decided to make their lives in major American Cities, the preconditions for all of that was the dramatic improvement in Public Safety that you saw in the 1990s and 2000, and that dramatic improvement in Public Safety was not just about making cities more attractive and appealing for middleclass residents. It had a transformative effect on poor and workingclass people, for whom they did not necessarily have another option. They were constrained. They could not just move to the suburbs. They did not always have the resources they needed to pick up space and move to another state entirely. These are people for whom this dramatic improvement in Public Safety had a huge effect on every aspect of their lives and it makes intuitive sense. If you are someone with limited assets, property crimes can ruin you. Property crime can be something that prevents you from climbing the economic ladder. It is something that because it engenders fears means it is harder for you to form deeper constructive relationships with other people. It makes everyone withdraw from public life. It makes everyone withdraw from the street, and it also engenders a lot of distrust. Society is where you have a lot of Violent Crime. Cities where you have a lot of Violent Crime are places where you dont have the kind of civic trust that greases the wheels of commerce and innovation. If you are thinking about upward mobility for poor and workingclass people, Public Safety is nonnegotiable. It is the foundation of everyone else. That deterioration, if it is temporary, if it is a blip, if you get this under control, that makes Everything Else much, much easier. That really is the thing that is absolutely nonnegotiable. The other thing forgive me. Host let me stay with Public Safety. Lets talk about mitigation if we talk about the challenges. Of course, in the wake of George Floyds killing, the protests around the country, there is a major rethinking spurred on by a lot of civic protest about the work of Police Departments around the country. The Manhattan Institute has been very much involved in this over the years. They were big proponents of the broken windows theory of policing decades back. So what is the institute thinking as the country rethinks policing about the best way forward . Guest we have a number of scholars who work on policing and criminal justice issues including heather mcdonald, rafael, jim copeland, among others. We have journalists who work on this set of issues as well, so there is, as you might expect, a range of opinions. We always want to encourage our scholars to go where their ideas take them, provided they are confident, with our deep belief in the central importance of Public Safety, and i say, when you are looking at this moment and looking to the future, it is very important to keep in mind that effective policing is vitally important. You can change society in any number of different ways, but effective policing, that sense of Public Safety is a foundation for Economic Growth or a flourishing Civil Society and Everything Else we care about. So then the question is what are the policies that will deliver more effective policing over time . There are many thoughtful people who offer different perspectives on that set of issues but one thing i am personally very concerned about right now is that there is a sense in which we are demanding more from Police Officers. We are demanding that they be more sensitive, they be more community oriented, that they approach the work in ways that will enhance the legitimacy of policing and i think that that is a valid demand, valid expectation. That is what you want. When you want to approach policing in these ways, you need to think about what are the policies that are actually going to get you there . I would argue that the idea of defunding the police is actually moving in a counterproductive direction. One thing that you absolutely want to see is better training of Police Officers and better training can be quite resource intensive. When you are thinking about compensation, there are many legitimate debates and discussions we can have about work rules, about compensation and what have you. When you are trying to attract talented people to a profession, particularly a profession that is under fire, a profession where there are a lot of very sharp criticisms of the folks in that profession, you will need to even more generously you will need to compensate even more generously. Change the way you are offering pension and Health Benefits and what have you, you might want to change the way the career arc of a Police Officer or another Public Employee works overtime, but what you do not want to do is move in this very reflexive way from a position of demonizing Law Enforcement from a position of demonizing Public Employees. Rather, you want to see how can we restructure these organizations . That restructuring might mean more resources rather than less, it might mean focusing in some areas rather than others here the other thing that is really important to keep in mind with police is that policing, to a very large extent, is about deterring crime. So when we are talking about criminal justice issues, people often talk about incarceration and policing as though they are entirely separate issues, but in fact, when you look at the United States compared to other market democracies, we actually spend somewhat less on policing and more on incarceration, and i would argue, and again, you know, this is something that is very debatable. Other thoughtful people have different views. I would argue that investing in Public Safety on the front end, investing in deterrents and prevention can be an effective way of reducing the need for a more punitive approach on the backend. That is not to say we do not need incarceration. Far from it. That is not to say you do not need to punish in a thoughtful, responsible way. It is not something people are missing when they are talking about defunding the police and actually pulling resources from programs, from training, from things that can actually make police more trusted and more effective at doing the work that we all need them to do. Host lets return to challenges for cities that have been highlighted by the pandemic. What is another . Guest another big challenge for those cities that had really flourished during the urban renaissance, during that period from 1982, the pandemic itself, is that many of the cities are very dependent on skilled professionals, high income households. That is true for a number of reasons. When youre looking at the economy as a whole, you see a transformation in these economies from an economy rooted more on the tradable sector, more on manufacturing and what have you, to an economy that is very service oriented. When you are looking at those professionals, they often times outsource a lot of household production. This could be true if you are a parent, with childcare, for restaurant meals, delivery, any number of services that make the cities very attractive as skilled professionals. It allows you to work longer hours and what have you. That is something that generated a lot of employment for workingclass people, particularly workingclass immigrants. When you have a pandemic, a shift to remote work, a variety of economic structural changes that make those cities less attractive to affluent, skilled professionals, then you have knock on consequences for those working and middleclass people who are in those Service Industries that are dependent on the dollars of higher income households. Another closely related dimension is the fiscal dimension and that is the fact that a number of cities have moved in a direction where they are dependent on a volatile base. They are dependent on the taxes paid by a relatively small number of very wealthy households and that means that they are very dependent on the benson this cycle business cycle. Even if you leave the pandemic aside, you can see a sharp correction when you have some decline in income for those professionals and their incomes tend to be a bit more cyclical. If you have an exodus of those individuals of those families, then that can mean that you need a very different approach to public finances and also potentially a very different attitude towards public spending than you did you took that population for granted. Host staying with the knowledgebased workers, university of chicago is suggesting as much as 40 of u. S. Jobs can be done remotely. I know you are already seeing, we all are, these debates happening about whether or not companies are, after a few months, thinking this is a different thing. Even a good percentage of the 40 ends up in permanently remote, what is the impact on the economic phase . There probably are positives and negatives. Guest it depends on if you are looking at this from the perspective of the country as a whole or from the perspective of cities pit one can argue that from the perspective of the country as of cities. One can argue we are coming out of an error that i hope will continue but an era of enormous urban success but urban success, as we discussed earlier, has been very concentrated in a small number of metropolitan areas that has a dense concentration of skilled professionals. Of course, there are those regions in the rust belt, many rural parts of the country that has seen a real brain drain so one possibility is the rise of remote work will create more flexibility in that regard and make it somewhat easier and more tractable for those other communities to compete for talent but of course, if you believe the concentration of talent is particularly invaluable for the United States strategically, in the wider world, there are particular externalities that are harder to capture when you are distributing that talent in a more broadway geographically. That is a cost you need to be mindful of from the perspective of the country. So i think that that is one way to look at it and i know that there are many communities, suburban, rural, some cities that have had a more difficult time in recent decades that are seeking to capitalize. The tricky part is that you are going to see those professionals who can be mobile, in a position to move, they will want to move to places with a very high quality of life, places that offer them attractive amenities. Certainly, they could be places that offer a good deal when it comes to taxes and spending, but i really believe that that high quality of life will be particularly important. That is work we at the Manhattan Institute have been focused on for many years and that is one reason why. You could have somewhat high taxes but if you are offering very high quality services, that can balance things out. Unfortunately, there are many cities where you are paying high taxes and you are not getting terribly Good Services but that is of course a larger conversation but i think that that is why there will be an opportunity for well governed communities, for communities that have efficient local governments that are able to bring out the best in their local workforce and creating the conditions for entrepreneurial growth. That could be cities. I would argue that many of these great cities will have a great advantage in that regard, so going from the countries to the cities, what you could see is a deepening of some trends we have seen for some time. The idea of a concentration of jobs in a Central Business dist